“You and me can’t live in the same country!” Ryerson snarled. “It ain’t big enough for the two of us!”
“Uh-huh,” Carey agreed. “You sure hit the nail on the head that time. And I’m staying. So if I was you, Tabat Ryerson, I’d fork that mangy bronc you’re riding and take out—pronto!”
“You’re telling me?” Ryerson’s fury was a thing to behold. “Why, you—”
* * *
ALL THREE OUTLAWS went for their guns. Carey’s six-shooter bellowed from the doorway, but the thin, tiger-like man on the right had flashed a fast gun, and his shot burned past Carey’s stomach. Tabat Ryerson’s quick, responsive jerk saved his life. Carey’s second shot knocked the tiger man reeling, and a third pinned him to the ground.
Ryerson had leaped to one side, triggering his pistol. He shot wildly, and splinters splattered in Bill’s face.
He whipped back inside the door, snapped a quick shot at Tabat, then went through the house with a lunge and slid through the back window just as the other man came around the corner. Bill’s feet hit the ground at the instant they saw each other, and both fired.
Bill shot low, and his bullet hit the big man above the belt-buckle and knocked him to the ground. The outlaw was game and rolled over, trying to get his feet under him. The second shot was through his lungs and the fellow went down, bloody froth mounting to his lips.
Carey slid to the corner and, crouching, looked around it. A shot split the edge of the log over his head; then he heard a sudden rattle of horse’s hoofs and rounded the corner to see Tabat Ryerson racing into the junipers.
He swore softly, knowing it had been only a beginning. Tabat knew who he was now. He would come back loaded for bear. Bill Carey walked toward the man on the ground, his gun ready.
The thin, wiry fellow who had spoiled his first shot was dead.
Carey walked back to the man behind the house. He also was dead. Bill scowled. Two gone, but they were two men who had been killed uselessly. Had it been Ryerson, these two might have lived.
Janie was beside him suddenly, her eyes wide and frightened.
“Are you all right?” she said anxiously.
Her wide gray eyes, frightened for him, stirred him strangely.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “They didn’t shoot too straight. Neither did I,” he added bitterly. “I missed Tabat!”
“You think he’ll come back?”
“Sure he’ll come back—with help!”
She poured him fresh coffee and he studied the red crease across his stomach. Scarcely a drop of blood showed. The merest graze of the skin. But when she saw it, her face paled.
“You and the old man better get up in the pines,” he said. “I’ll hold it here.”
“No.” She shook her head with finality. “This is our home. Besides, Dad can’t be moved.”
“You’re stubborn,” he said. “A man could like a girl like you.”
She smiled faintly. “Are you making love to me, Bill Carey?”
He flushed, then grinned. “Maybe. If I knew how, I reckon I would. I ain’t so much, though. Just a would-be rancher who got gypped out of his ranch and robbed a bank.”
“I think you’re a good man at heart, Bill.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “I was raised right. Reckon I’ve come a long way since then.”
He glanced at the hills. He was worried. Sheriff Buck Walters wasn’t the man to give up. He had been close behind Bill yesterday. What had happened?
His eyes drifted down across the swell of the grassland toward the cottonwood-lined stream far below. The mist still lay in thin, emaciated streamers along the edge of the trees. A man could love this country. He narrowed his eyes, seeing white-faced cattle feeding over that broad, beautiful range. Yes, a man could do a lot here.
Regret stirred within him. That bank. Why did a man have to be such a hotheaded fool? He had been gypped, he knew. He had been tricked into asking for that loan, and he suspected there had been some rustling of his cattle. Well, that didn’t matter now. No matter who had been in the right before, robbing the bank had put him in the wrong. He was over the line now, the thin line that divided so many men of the early west into the law-abiding and the lawless.
Reason told him he was one with Tabat Ryerson and the Shafter Hills gang now, but everything within him rebelled against it.
Thinking of old Hawk Shafter, he wondered. The old man was an outlaw, but he had also been a square shooter. Maybe, if—
Carey pushed away the thought. Getting into the Hawk’s Nest would be almost impossible.
* * *
SHERIFF WALTERS KEPT returning to his mind. The grim, hard-bitten old lawman would never leave a hot trail. Remembering the sheriff made Bill remember the gold and his saddle. Glancing down the empty trail, he turned and started up the mountain. His left arm was stiff, although he could use it. The bullet had gone through the muscle atop his shoulder. His head wound had been only a graze.
When he reached the junipers, he went into the thick tangle where he had hidden his saddle. The saddle was there, but the saddlebags were flat and empty!
Tabat Ryerson!
He had seen the outlaw come this way. Somehow, in hunting a hiding place from gunfire, the outlaw had found these bags, and had removed the gold.
Carey picked up the bags, and a white piece of paper dropped out. On it was written:
Thanks. You won’t need this here where you’re going.
Tabat.
Grimly Bill Carey swung his saddle to his right shoulder and clumped down the mountain, staggering over the rocks. Might as well saddle that big black and be ready. When Walters came, he wouldn’t have much time.
Walters! Ryerson! Carey grinned. If the two came at once, that would be something. He chuckled, and the thought kept stirring in his mind.
Walters could have lost his trail the other side of the mountain. Probably even now he was striking around for it. Carey recalled that he had ridden over a long rock ledge back there, and his trail might have been even better hidden than he believed.
If Buck Walters had seen him, he would have come right over here. And Tabat—
Carey dropped the saddle on the hard ground and, picking up his hair rope, shook out a loop. When he had roped the black and led the mount out of the corral, he turned to see Janie standing in the doorway watching him gravely. Their eyes met briefly; then she turned and walked back into the house, her face grave and serious.
He flushed suddenly. She thought he was leaving. She thought he was running away. Stubbornly he saddled the black, then swung into the saddle. The outlaw bunch might get here before he could find the sheriff. It was a chance he would have to take. His eyes strayed to the door again, and he turned the horse that way.
Janie stepped into the doorway.
“You got a rifle?” he demanded. His voice was harsh without his wanting it so.
She nodded, without speaking.
“Then hand me mine,” he said. “If they come, be durned sure it’s Ryerson’s gang, then use that rifle. Be sure, because it might be a posse.”
He held his rifle in his hand and, turning the black, rode off up the mountain down which he had come the night before. Three times he looked back. Each time the trail was empty of dust, and each time he could see the slim, erect figure of the girl in the doorway.
When he had been riding for no more than a half hour, he saw the posse—a tight little knot of some fifteen men, led by a tall, white-haired old man on a sorrel horse. Buck Walters. Beside the white-haired man was a thin, dried-out wisp of a half-breed. Antonio Deer! With that tracker on his trail, it was a wonder they hadn’t closed in already.
He looked downhill, then grinned and lifted his rifle. He aimed and fired almost in the same instant, shooting at a tree a dozen feet away from the sheriff. The sorrel reared suddenly; then he saw the posse scatter out, hesitate only an instant, and then, with a whoop, start for him.
He was several hundred yards away and knew the country
now. He wheeled his horse and took off through the brush at right angles to the trail, then cut back as though to swing toward the direction from which they had come. Whipping the black around a clump of juniper, he straightened out on the trail for home.
They would be cautious in the trees, he knew. That would delay them a little, at least.
When he came out on the mountainside above the Conway cabin, his heart gave a leap. Down the trail was a cloud of dust, and the horsemen were already within a quarter of a mile of the cabin!
* * *
TOUCHING SPURS TO the black he started downhill at breakneck speed, hoping against hope they wouldn’t see him. Yet he had gone no more than a hundred yards when he heard a distant yell and saw several men cut away from the main body and start for him.
A rifle spoke.
The lead horse stumbled and went down, and Bill Carey saw a tiny puff of smoke lift from a cabin window.
The horsemen broke, scattering wide, but advancing on the house. The black was in a dead run now, and Bill lifted his rifle and took a snapshot at the approaching horsemen who were coming on undaunted by the girl’s shot.
At that distance and from a running horse, he didn’t expect a hit, nor did he make one, but the shot slowed the horsemen up, as he had hoped. Then he was nearing the cabin, and he saw two more horsemen break from the woods and start for him. They were close up, and he blasted a shot with the rifle held across his chest, and saw one man throw up his hands and plunge to the ground.
The other wheeled his horse, and Bill Carey fired three times as swiftly as he could chamber the shells. He saw the horse go down, throwing the man headlong into the mesquite.
Then the black was charging into the yard, and Bill Carey hit the ground running and made the cabin. The door slammed open as if it had been timed for his arrival, and he lunged inside.
Janie looked up at him, her eyes flashing; then as he crossed to the window, she dropped the bar in place.
A shot splattered glass and punched a hole in the bottom of the washbasin. Another thudded into the log sill below the window. Kneeling beside it, Carey put two quick shots into the brush beyond the corral, and drew back to reload.
Suddenly, from outside, there was a startled yell. Peering out through the window he could see a long stream of horsemen pouring out of the woods and coming down the hill.
Startled, Janie glanced at him.
“The posse!” he said grimly.
Her father was up on one elbow, cursing feebly at his helplessness. A man started from the brush, and Janie’s rifle spoke. The fellow stumbled, then scrambled back into the mesquite.
Outside everything was a bedlam of roaring guns now. Somewhere a horse screamed in pain, and shots thudded into the cabin wall.
Jerking out his six-guns, Bill Carey sprang for the door. He threw it open and snapped a quick shot at a man peering around the corral. The fellow let go and dropped flat on his face, arms outspread.
The fight was moving away. Both outlaws and posse were mounted, and it was turning into a running fight.
Bill Carey crouched near the house, his face twisted in a scowl. Tabat Ryerson had come back to kill him. It wasn’t like Tabat to run, not at this stage of the game. He would never leave now without killing Carey, or being killed.
Where was he?
Carey slid along the cabin wall, pressed close to the logs. The space between the house and corral was empty, except for a dead horse, lying with its back toward him. There was no movement in the corral. The dead man lay by the corner; another lay across the water trough.
The barn! Carey lunged from shelter and made the corral in a quick sprint. He went around the corral, still running, and dived for the side wall of the barn. When he reached it, he lifted himself slowly, trying to get a look into the window.
Carey could see nothing. Sunlight fell through the open door and across the shafts of an old buckboard. Wisps of hay hung down from the small loft overhead. There was nothing. No movement. No sign of anything human.
The firing had faded into the distance now, and was growing desultory. Somebody was winning and, knowing Buck Walters and the hard-bitten posse behind him, Bill Carey thought he knew who it was.
Bill Carey eased around the corner and glanced at the door of the barn. When he went through that door he was going to be outlined, stark and clear in the sunlight. But he was going through. Suddenly, he was mad clear through. He had never liked sneaking around. He liked to meet trouble face to face and blast it out, and the devil take the unfortunate or the slow of hand!
He lunged around the doorpost and went through that path of sunlight with a lunge that carried him into the shadow even as a gun bellowed. Dust fell from overhead, but he had seen the flash of the gun. Tabat Ryerson was behind the buckboard!
* * *
CAREY STEPPED BACK into the open, firing as he moved. He could see only a vague outline, but he salted that outline down with lead and snapped a few shots around it just for luck. He felt a slug hit him and went to his knees. Then he was up, and standing there swaying, he thumbed shells into a gun and heard Ryerson’s gun bellow. Something knocked him back into the corner of the stall; then Tabat came out into the open and Bill drilled him four times over the shirt pocket with four fast-triggered shots, all of them within the outline of the pocket itself.
Tabat folded and went down, and with his heart shot to pieces, he still had life in him. He stared up at Carey, his eyes blazing. “You always had my number, curse you!” he gasped. “I hate the life of you, but you’re a mule-tough hombre!”
He sagged, and the light went out of his eyes. Bill Carey automatically thumbed shells into his guns, staring down at the bullet-riddled body. The man was fairly ballasted with lead.
“You’re a right tough man, yourself!” he said softly. “A right tough man!”
Carey walked out into the sunlight and saw Sheriff Buck Walters and several of his men riding into the yard. He holstered his guns, and stood there waiting, his mouth tight.
Janie was standing in the doorway, standing as he had seen her so many times, as he knew he could never forget her.
Suddenly Bill Carey felt strange and lonely. Walters looked down.
“Looks like you had a bad time, Bill,” he said drily, “tackling all these bandits. I want to apologize, too.”
“For what?” Carey stared up at the hard riding sheriff.
“Why,” Buck said innocently, “for thinking you was a thief! Old Hankins swore it was you robbed him, but he’s so mean he can’t see straight. When we found all that gold in Ryerson’s saddlebags, we knew it was him was the thief. He being an outlaw, anyway, stands to reason we was wrong. Anyway, when we seen you this morning you was riding a big black, and that bandit didn’t have no black horse.”
“Funny, ain’t it,” Carey agreed, looking cynically at the old sheriff, “how a man can make mistakes?”
“Sure is,” Walters agreed. “Even a salty hombre like you might make one.” The sheriff patted his horse on the shoulder. “But there’d be no reason for him to make two!”
Bill Carey glanced at Janie Conway, her eyes shining with gladness.
“Why, Buck, I reckon you’re right as rain!” Bill said. “I think if I was to leave this here ranch, I’d be making another one! Maybe you all better ride over here sometime and pay us a visit!”
“Us?” Walters looked at him, then at the girl. “Oh! Yeah, I see what you mean.” Buck swung his horse around, then glanced down again. “Can she bake a cherry pie?”
“Can she?” Carey grinned. “Why, man, when we get married, she—”
He looked toward the door, and the girl had disappeared.
“Don’t bother me, Sheriff,” he said, grinning. “Can’t you see I’m a family man?”
About Louis L’Amour
* * *
“I think of myself in the oral tradition—
as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man
in the shadows of the campfire. That’s
the way
I’d like to be remembered as a storyteller.
A good storyteller.”
IT IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.
Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.
Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.
Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.
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